THE HERALD

Time for another Grab Bag!

Work and testing on patch 1.127 continues with some exciting market explorer search improvements, new housing models and textures, Endless Conquest tweaks, tons of bug fixes, and more coming soon! We also want to remind folks that House Repossession for account inactivity will be re-enabled with 1.127 (not house rent!). Anyone with a currently condemned house and an active account needn’t worry though, their house will be fixed to show the correct, active state when the patch comes out and we’ll give an additional 3-day grace period for any houses that are meant to be repossessed. More details to come with the test server notes in the coming weeks!

Thanks, as always, to everyone for your questions! You can submit any questions relating to current development plans, to request clarification on basic game mechanic questions, or questions on community issues through the Grab Bag Submission form. For any other feedback or suggestions please use our feedback form.

Continue reading for the questions 🙂

Does the Merchants Cloak of Winters ability, stun block, negate melee stuns as well?

No, all Stun Feedback abilities only prevent casted stuns. 

Can a toon have more than 10 percent melee resists? i.e. melee resist ring plus ow/belt/staff etc

There are some melee resist bonus abilities that grant more than 10% to those resistances such as the Pictslayer Runic Mace (20%, though a shorter duration) as well as class abilities like Impervious Skin in the Dementia specialization for Vampiirs (22%).

If the question is more about whether or not these various abilities from items or classes will stack together, then the answer is no. The highest item-based melee resist bonus will overwrite any lower versions when using two or more item-based melee resist buff abilities simultaneously and when using an item-based and class-based melee resist buff at the same time they will co-exist but not stack, with only the highest delve version applying.

What are the details behind the forest eldritch /use on the Animist loyalty cloak? What is the range of its bolt? How many attackers can it attack at once? What is the damage type of its bolt?

The Forest Eldritch pet’s bolt is 1875 range, can only hit 1 target at a time (though the pet can switch targets), and uses Matter damage.

Is 1% celerity, 1 point in quickness or unrelated? If you’ve the 37% celerity from warden do you still need to cap quickness?

Quickness stats/buffs, TOA melee haste% stats, haste% buffs, celerity and the weapon’s speed are all factors in determining overall swing speed. The slower the weapon speed, the more of all of the stats and buffs you will need to reach the 1.5s swing speed cap.

For classes like the Warden that use 1-handed weapons, which are generally much faster than 2-handed, it can be possible to obtain the 1.5s swing speed cap without capping quickness, yes. We aren’t going to give out the exact formula here but there are several 3rd party tools that will give a great approximation of how much of each stat you need to reach the swing speed cap!

In the past it was said that raising base con and hitpoints would transfer to a necro pet (spirit aegis). Lately i was doing some testing and i have found that the necro pet has a 3000 hitpoint cap. Increasing base con, hitpoints, buffed or unbuffed before pet creation, 25% buff bonus, or increasing con/hitpoints with items in temps. Nothing seems to increase the HP of a pet. Why is this and when did it change? Also what does transfer to the pet. Does melee dmg and speed in a temp affect the pet? Does RA Toughness still work on the pet as well?

The Necromancer class was revamped in Patch 1.122B to no longer be totally reliant on their pets. This means that the design of the class changed as well as many of their abilities and functions. Pets cast by Necromancers do not receive any benefit from the Necromancer’s stats now. However, like all other class pets, buffs cast on the pet will increase the Necromancer pet’s melee absorption, causing it to take much less damage.

From the 1.122B notes:

The Necromancer revamp brings forth a new and exciting direction to a class that has been at its best, difficult to manage, balance, and play; and at its worst, broken. Still, the decision to embark on this new direction did not come easily and is not without risk but it’s one that we feel strongly in as the best to take the class. The seeds of this idea were planted many years ago, back within the halls of Mythic Entertainment, and we’re happy to finally see them blossom.

Before getting into the specific changes in the notes below, we wanted to outline some of the big-picture mechanical changes to the class:
 

• Generally-speaking, there are 3 “classes” in one here, based on specialization: a pure caster, a melee/caster hybrid, and a pet-based, utility caster. These 3 variations of the class should cover much of what the original necromancer class could do but in a way that makes their impact on the battlefield more dynamic, direct, and approachable to more players.
• The current mechanic involving the invulnerable Necromancer shade controlling and exclusively acting through their pet is no longer part of the class. The class will still be a unique, largely pet-based class but the aforementioned pet-dynamic will no longer exist and instead the Necromancer itself will use powerful new forms and abilities to act out its will directly on the battlefield.
• These three forms or shapeshifts are augmented by their respective spec-line and also augment the abilities within their spec-line. We’ve tried to make them work seamlessly across all three specializations, and where appropriate, limited certain abilities (pets) to certain forms.
• The melee-oriented form clearly brings some new itemization questions into play. If specializing in the melee-oriented line, players will want to gain melee-related stats like quickness, constitution, hits, armor factor, melee damage, melee haste, and style damage as well as the casting stats they already desire. To make things easier on players, intelligence (and not strength) will be used as the main melee damage and weaponskill stat. Some of the abilities in the spec-line address this itemization need directly already and we’ll be introducing new items that accommodate this going forward.

Enjoy the weekend, and see you in the frontiers! 🙂

The traveling merchants have departed and the Doppelganger Invasion event has come to an end.

• The event’s Doppelganger spawn rates, locations, and RP rewards will permanently remain.
• Doppelgangers will no longer drop Invader Seals.
• Players will have any Invader Seals removed upon logging into the game.
• Players can no longer obtain or turn-in the [Daily] Doppelganger Invasion quest.

RvR bonuses will continue at their existing values until July 7th:

• On Ywain:
  • 50% bonus to RPs from kills
  • 50% bonus to normal XP gain in all classic and shrouded isle zones and dungeons.

• On Gaheris:
  • 50% bonus to normal XP gain in all classic and shrouded isle zones and dungeons.
  • 50% bonus to normal RP gain in the capital cities.

• In each capital city:
  • 40% Bonus to Crafting Speed
  • 20% Bonus to Crafting Skill Gain

• In each housing zone:
  • 20% Bonus to Crafting Speed
  • 10% Bonus to Crafting Skill Gain

‘Tis a windy Grab Bag today!

Just a note to remind people about our official DAoC Twitch stream on Saturday nights! Join us for a bird’s eye view of the frontiers, good chat, and of course our giveaways 🙂 This Saturday’s stream is a special giveaway stream as we’ll be giving away the following (in no particular order):

• 30 Charge 50% RP Bonus Potion
• Name Respec
• 3 Month Game Timecode
• Race Respec
• Max Character Boost
• Dragon Mount

Do not miss this!! Prizes are limited to one win per person. The stream starts approx 9:45PM GMT / 4:45PM EST with the first giveaway starting at 10PM GMT/ 5PM EST! 

Thanks, as always, to everyone for your questions! You can submit any questions relating to current development plans, to request clarification on basic game mechanic questions, or questions on community issues through the Grab Bag Submission form. For any other feedback or suggestions please use our feedback form.

Onward for the questions!

Hello, I have a question about Archery. Why is the dex related damage from Archery capped at around 400? Every other damaging stat to my knowledge has some return even if diminishing. At this point there is no way other than Falcon’s Eye to increase archery damage, as the required dex cap is far too easy to reach.

While it is true that archery damage per hit does not increase over a certain amount of dexterity, there are still benefits of increasing the dexterity stat beyond that cap such as increased cast speed, defense penetration, and to-hit chance all of which do increase the overall damage dealt by an archer. The lower valued damage cap also means that archers can more easily have additional dexterity over the cap and have their damage protected from any stat debuffs.

Hello, my guild is wanting to create a guild house in the same housing region as all of our personal houses however it seems our guild is based on another Ywain server. Is there any way to have the guild transferred to another Ywain server so we can place our guild house at the desired location?

Not at this time.

From our Guild Housing guide:

Once a house has been made into a guild hall, it remains a guild hall and the property of the guild. The house cannot be returned to private home status, nor can it be sold to another player or guild. Guilds that wish to move their guild hall must wait until their old hall is repossessed before they can establish a new one.

The only way for guild halls to be repossessed currently is by not paying rent, and rent is currently disabled. We do not plan on re-enabling rent with 1.127 but are investigating other solutions for personal house and guild hall transfers.

I have a question on absorb. Does 100 AF = 1% absorb? If so, if I have 900 AF for 9% absorb, with 27% abs from chest/boots/etc does that mean I have 27 +9 for 36% absorb? Or how does that work?

Both Absorb% (ABS) and Armor Factor (AF) are calculated entirely separately and are not combined into a single value. An AF debuff would not reduce your ABS and an ABS buff would not increase your AF. Though increasing your ABS would decrease the overall melee damage taken just as increasing your AF does, giving an equivalent value for each is not really possible since ABS from armor is calculated in the damage taken formula differently than ABS from a buff/debuff.

There are many factors involved in the damage taken formula such as armor condition/quality, the effective AF on the armor piece hit, that armor’s ABS value, a character’s AF buffs and stats, then any character buffs to ABS, and the character’s resistance to the damage type. And that does not even include the many variables on the attacker’s side of the equation that are combined with damage variance to determine how much damage is actually dealt.

I have noticed that the ml ability and the reaver scare pet abilities do not work on bonedancer pets. The caster type in particular. Why is that?

From our September 13th, 2019 grab bag:

Bonedancer pets are a bit unique when it comes to pet scares. Because the pets /assist each other by default, if the Cowering Bellow effect does not hit ALL of the pets at once, the remaining pets will not be scared and cause the commander pet to re-aggro immediately due to the sub-pet(s) that are still attacking.

Pet-scaring all of a BD’s pets at once can admittedly be hard to accomplish when they are spread out, but this is an intended benefit of the Bonedancer class.

How are the RPs from killing one player split amongst group members? I’ve noticed that if a specific person at a specific RR is worth about 4k solo, then if I killed that same 1 person with 7 other members in group I will get around 800-900 RPs. 900×8=7200 RPs. It does not seem to split evenly in groups in fact it looks like RPs are buffed for groups which only seems to encourage grouping and killing smaller numbers.

There is an inherent XP and RP bonus for being in a group and the more players in the group the better the bonus. This is done to encourage players to group up in both PvE and RvR to accomplish tasks and defeat their realm foes.

We do agree that in some cases this can incentivize the behavior described but in many other cases it allows groups to progress as fast in XP while levelling or through realm ranks in RvR as experienced “solo” or “small-group” players. If the grouping bonus was removed there is potential for the most efficient path to progress in the game to be as a solo player and that would not be aligned with the team/group/realm-oriented gameplay that makes Dark Age of Camelot so special!

However, we are always looking for ways to make all playstyles engaging and rewarding. If you have feedback about this or suggestions on how to improve this dynamic for smaller groups and solo players, while still maintaining a strong benefit for grouping, we would love to hear your thoughts!

Have a wonderful weekend all, and hope to see you on our official Twitch channel on Saturday night! 🙂
 

The Grab Bag

If you missed our April newsletter last month, then you haven’t caught a glimpse of our new housing models and textures coming in Patch 1.127! Not to worry though, you can check out the housing preview and full newsletter here  🙂 Has anyone figured out the math puzzle yet!?!

Thanks, as always, to everyone for your questions! You can submit any questions relating to current development plans, to request clarification on basic game mechanic questions, or questions on community issues through the Grab Bag Submission form. For any other feedback or suggestions please use our feedback form.

On to the questions!

I built a new template for my theurgist with Curse set (17 abs melee) and I also use the Otherworldly Agile Gloves that have a 40 abs proc. I do a little test with my pally. I hit my theurgist about 100 times but never proc the gloves… is correct gloves don’t proc if I have abs buff?

We did a test of our own to ensure that the gloves still proc properly and were able to confirm that they do, even when using the Theurgist’s Curse armor set with the increased ABS buff. 

The reason you did not see a proc in your tests is simply that gloves have the smallest chance to be hit out of all the armor slots (tied with boots) and so a 100-swing test is not guaranteed to hit the gloves enough times for them to proc, which is also chance-based.

Can you help me understand what the curse 3 piece set even benefits for a champ? It talks about even the odds and level the odds range extended to 1500 where is this buff that it talks about?

Even the Odds and Level the Odds are magic resist buffs that are attached to the Champion’s level 37 and 47 dexterity/quickness instant debuff spells.

The level 37 ability Level the Odds increases only the Champion’s magic resistances by 6% while the level 47 Even the Odds increases the Champion’s group’s magic resistance by 10% at a range of 1000.

The Champion’s Curse set increases the effectiveness of these magic resist increases by 50% for both versions and makes them both 1500 range group-buffs.

For the Bard mez, does having +skill in music affect the chance of the mezz being resisted in any way?

No, the spell resist rate is only affected by the level of the spell in comparison to the level of the target.

A level 50 spell cast against a level 50 target should see resist rates around 10%.

A level 35 spell cast against a level 50 target will see a higher than normal resist rate (around 15-20%), regardless of how many +skills are in the caster’s gear.

Spell piercing does also provide a small bonus to resist rates but other than that, only the Mastery of Focus realm ability (and/or a Focal Mythirian) will improve resist rates when casting offensive spells since it increases the level of your casted spells (up to a maximum of level 50).

What determines resist rates on pulse charms and does the Mastery of Focus realm ability affect them?

Unlike other spells, resist rates of the charm pulses after their initial cast are only affected by the level of the character and their composite Instrument or Light specialization values. Having a maximum composite specialization level allows for fewer resistances and allows Minstrels and Mentalists the ability to charm higher level mobs. Charsima and Intelligence have no effect on the pulse charms’ resistance rates.

The Mastery of Focus realm ability also does not affect the resist rates on the subsequent pulses of the charms but does affect the initial cast on the mob that starts the charm song.

With the graphical changes coming to housing, which look awesome by the way, are there anymore graphical improvements coming down the road also? Such as world graphical updates, NPC texture updates, etc.

We’ll be focusing in on some more character cosmetic and customization options in the nearer future but do have long-term plans for texture updates to other areas of the game like pets, Shrouded Isles lands and monsters, and more!

Have a great weekend, all!

See you in the frontier 🙂

The Rites of Sprint event has come to an end but we are happy to announce that the existing bonuses, traveling merchants, and Doppelganger Invasion event are being extended until Tuesday June 2nd, 2020!

Additionally, any Doppelganger spawn points that were found in Folley Lake, the Trellebourg, and Moydruim Castle have been moved to other locations in Hadrian’s Wall, Odin’s Gate, and Emain Macha.
 

We are currently experiencing issues sending and receiving certain emails to player accounts that use @Hotmail, @Microsoft, @MSN, and @Outlook email addresses.

Users that have contacted support@darkageofcamelot.com from one of the affected email services and not received a response after 72 hours from sending should try to re-contact support from a different email service than the affected ones or change their existing EA account to use a different email address service (via Origin) and re-contact support.

Please try to include all relevant account information in your request such as any applicable game account names, their associated email address (especially if emailing from a different email than the game accounts’), account secret word (if applicable), and any other account verifying information that will help our support team assist you as quickly as possible.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused and appreciate your patience and understanding as we work to get this resolved as soon as possible.

Update: 10:33 AM EST / 3:33 PM GMT: Ywain is back online and open to all players!

The Ywain server will be coming down tomorrow, April 28th (5:45 AM EST / 10:45 AM GMT) to perform Amazon server hosting maintenance.

We appreciate your patience and understanding!

TGIF! Time for the Grab Bag!

It’s also coming to the end of the month which means the April newsletter is not far away! Make sure you’ve signed up to get the newsletter right to your inbox as soon as it’s out 🙂

Thanks, as always, to everyone for your questions! You can submit any questions relating to current development plans, to request clarification on basic game mechanic questions, or questions on community issues through the Grab Bag Submission form. For any other feedback or suggestions please use our feedback form.

Patch 1.127’s development is ongoing as we iron out the last few remaining issues and internally test the version. 1.127 includes a major market explorer search revamp, brand new housing models and textures (and they look FANTASTIC!), class changes based on your ongoing feedback, many, many much-requested bug fixes, and much more! We hope to have the version available for testing on Pendragon within the next few weeks!

Read on for the questions 🙂

I have a freezing conqueror Mth. It lists pow regen 10, end regen3, dps 3, CC decrease 5, Cold 5% resist cold cap 2%.
Clearly this is a myth for a caster or caster hybrid. However when I test the dummy with the myth on and off my dps damage doesn’t scale up. Is this working as intended?

The DPS stat improves melee damage, not spell damage. The DPS stat, crowd control decrease, and endurance regen are all melee-oriented stats while the power regen is useful to casters and hybrids.

Does the onslaught mythirian stack with Warlord?  Does it stack with the siege buff of the Champ, Minstrel and Skald ?

Yes and yes! A general rule of thumb is that bonuses from items will stack with bonuses from spell-buffs but generally multiple spell-buffs that do the same thing will not stack with each other. Another general rule is that all “Myth:” item bonuses stack with other similar bonuses. In this example, the item-based Onslaught Mythirian’s siege speed bonus stacks with the passive Warlord ability and both of those stack with the active siege buff from Champions, Minstrels and Skalds. 

Some storms will break mezz or cause the Stormlord to lose speed when the storm is hit.  Is there a list that tells which storms cause damage and which do not?  For example, does the power drain storm break mezz?

Any enemy inside a storm (all types) will be placed into combat and have their mesmerisation and speed spells broken by any pulse of that storm. However, only the Energy Tempest storm that deals damage to an enemy’s health will cause the caster of the storm to enter combat and break their speed.

The Bone Revenants in the Darkness line seem not to do anything. I’ve watched them go to enemy players and they do no damage. I’ve watched them go to NPCs and training dummies and still no damage. How do they work?

In our testing the spell is working as described in its delve. Bone Revenants is a chant that will periodically spawn fossil phantoms who automatically seek out nearby enemy players and explode for damage when they reach their chosen target. The phantoms are set to only target enemy players and not NPCs,  monsters, or pets. That last part is set to be changed in patch 1.127 when the phantoms will hit enemy players and enemy player pets.

Do all weapons have the same proc rate? which weapons are slower/faster? (i.e. pet proccing or not) how much higher is the proc rate for a 2hander than a 1hander?

Proc rates are set individually on each item and so this can depend. Typically weapon (and armor) proc rates are between 7 and 12%. Some two-handed weapon procs do have a 3-5% higher proc rate but most two-handed weapons have identical proc rates to their one-handed versions.

That’s all for this week!
Stay safe out there, everyone 🙂

This week’s Grab Bag is upon us!

Don’t forget we have many many events going on ingame right now, so don’t miss out! RvR Bonuses, Spring Flowers & Doppelganger Invasion, along with the Rites of Spring event! 🙂

Thanks, as always, to everyone for your questions! You can submit any questions relating to current development plans, to request clarification on basic game mechanic questions, or questions on community issues through the Grab Bag Submission form. For any other feedback or suggestions please use our feedback form.

Continue reading for the questions 🙂

Why isn’t the shift key available as modifier in /keyboard?

The Shift key is enabled as a modifier by default. It’s not on the /keyboard menu because disabling it would cause some issues with other client functions and keyboard shortcuts.

How big is the falloff/reduction in duration from AoE crowd control spells, like mezz? For example, if someone is at the “far edge” of an AoE mezz, is the mezz potentially only a single second?

The falloff rate from the center point of an AoE is different for the duration of spells versus their damage.

Durations are reduced to half of what the center of the area of effect would be. In other words, a player that is the center of an AoE mesmerize might see a 60s duration mez but if that same character was at the max radius away to still get mesmerized by the same spell they would see a 30s duration mesmerize.

Conversely, for damage-base spells, the effectiveness is reduced all the way down to 0. So a PBAoE that hits for 800 at its center will hit for 0 at max radius away from center.

Falloff for damage over times is unique in that AoE DoTs do not have a reduced damage or duration no matter how far from the center-point of the AoE the target is.

I noticed some gear has an enchantment bonus. Is this considered separate from a buff bonus or do they stack for an enchantment chanter and the other realms mirrors.

The +Enchantment skill bonus generally improves abilities in the Enchantment specialization of Enchanters only. However, this skill is a bit less common these days as most equipment uses the +All Magic skills instead (which would affect all 3 of the Enchanter’s magic skill lines instead of just the Enchantments line).

There is also a “stat enhancement spell effectiveness”  bonus which is a buff% bonus that pertains to any stat-based buffs (strength, constitution, acuity, etc). Meaning if you have 25% of this bonus in your character’s gear, a strength buff that delves on the spell for +40 will grant an additional 25% strength. This stat bonus doesn’t really have much to do with Enchantment Enchanters directly, but it would help Enchanters when casting their self-Armor Factor buff and any Champion Level based stat-buffs they might have.

Before I had my cyclop shield as small so I turned it in for medium and now I want it back to small again since I can use more fun skin for small, can I turn it in and change it? I have done the quest long time ago, and I’m pretty sure when you change and have done the encounter you get it insta lvl10.

If you did the original encounter you can turn it in to change it and receive a level 10 version instantly. If you instead bought the artifact, then leveled it to 10, and then change it for a new small shield version, you’ll need to level it again.

How does the game add multipliers (like duration and range) to spells?  For example, is a 9 second stun with 23% duration 10 or 11 seconds? Is there any rounding or is the decimal always ignored/truncated.

The short answer is that the decimal is always truncated/ignored.

The long answer is that ability duration is mainly determined by these factors: the base duration of the spell, the duration% bonus of the caster, and any magical resists or +crowd control reduction bonuses (realm ability or item-based) on the target. Spell piercing can also play a role indirectly by affecting a target’s magical resists, but that can be extrapolated from the following scenarios:

Scenario 1:
Spell: 9 second duration stun that uses heat magic damage
Caster: 25% spell duration
Target: 50% heat magic resist, 0% cc reduction

Actual stun duration will be 9s * 1.25 for spell duration = 11s (decimal is truncated here), then multiply that by 0.5 due to the magic resist = 5.5s with the decimal truncated again, leaving a 5s duration in-game.

When viewing this exact scenario in-game the tooltip will display “4s” remaining since the tooltip duration counts down to 0 and not to 1. So even though it shows 4s remaining, it’s actually a 5s duration in total.

Scenario 2:
Spell: 9 second duration stun that uses heat magic damage
Caster: 25% spell duration
Target: 50% heat magic resist and 55% cc reduction from determination realm ability.

Actual stun duration will be ((9s * 1.25) * .5) * 0.45 = 2s (again, the decimals are truncated at each step)

Scenario 3:
Spell: 9 second duration stun that uses heat magic damage
Caster: 25% spell duration
Target: 50% heat magic resist and 80% cc reduction from determination realm ability + stoicism.

Actual stun duration will be ((9s * 1.25) * .5) * 0.2 = 1s

Stay safe and sane everyone! 🙂